Mr Anholt, who works as a consultant to numerous governments, including Britain's, frequently gets hostile responses to the term "nation branding". "At first there was outrage," he recalled. "People said: 'You're treating nations like nothing more than products in the global supermarket!' Which I actually thought was a great metaphor."

At the big post-election party at a Capitol Hill hotel, the big names in the Demo-cratic party machine made triumphant entrances to cheers and mutual back-slapping. They were not all household names - some were chief mechanics from the party's boiler room - but they were all heroes to the joyful activists. For an organisation accustomed to defeat, it was the best night out in a decade.

Lord Sainsbury, the man who has kept the Labour party financially afloat for the past decade, yesterday resigned as science minister saying he wanted to spend more time on his huge charitable interests.

Leader: Whether landing in a small plane on Barra's cockle beach or jumping ashore on Foula, Britain's most remote inhabited spot, walled in by cliffs 15 miles west of Shetland, islands are different from the rest of Britain.

In an article headlined Why do dads kill children? G2, page 16, November 8, we said that more than half of under-16-year-olds killed in the UK between 2002 and 2003 were killed by a parent and maternal killings accounted for only 5% of that total. In fact, Home Office figures for England and Wales show that killings of children by a natural parent are committed in roughly equal proportions by mothers (47%) and fathers (53%).